Arriving in Rome, the exiled leader of Tibet's Buddhists did just what the Romans do. Dressed in his official violet robe, the Dalai Lama went to see the Pope. His offerings: a portrait and his own biography of Buddha. In return Paul VI gave the Dalai Lama a pontifical medal and a book about his own trip to the Far East. The two parted beaming from a summit conference described by one Vatican watcher as "an encounter of the two Gospels," Christ's Sermon on the Mount and Buddha's Sermon on the Benares.

Marilyn Chambers, 21, the Mom on the Ivory Snow box and the star of hardcore skin flicks like Behind the Green Door, gained academic credentials this week. Manhattan's innovative New School for Social Research invited her to speak at the first session of its new course: "Pornography Uncovered, Eroticism Exposed." Some 550 students turned up to see Marilyn come clean. Instead they got a tepid interview session. (Q. "How do you do 30 or 40 takes of a scene in a skin flick?" A. "You don't.") Four officers from the morals squad were on hand, but off duty. "I was here to learn," said one studiously.

Telegenic Tennessee Senator Howard H. Baker has been making time with the public as he puts in a continuous appearance on the Senate Watergate committee. Now it turns out that he has also been making notes--for a novel. Although it is not intended to be autobiographical, it will trace the rise of a country lawyer to the Senate. Praising Author Baker's savor of his fellow Tennesseans, his publisher, Doubleday & Co., is encouraging him to include a relationship that links the freshman politico with a venerable Senator who sounds remarkably like Baker's own colleague, Senator Sam Ervin.

Limo-Liberal Mayor John Lindsay of New York is enjoying the perks of his job while he still has them. One perquisite is his appearance at the city's annual film festival at Lincoln Center, where he gets to squire those sexy foreign film stars. But why doesn't he get someone to write some new jokes? Ogling Actress Jacqueline Bisset, His Honor trotted out the same saw he used for Catherine Deneuve three years ago: "They don't make pretty girls like that any more. And neither do I."

Reliably reported: a lovers' tiff. The British press's ardor for prickly Princess Anne is waning as her Nov. 14 marriage to Captain Mark Phillips approaches. Annoyed by the command that servicemen pass the hat for the young couple, newsmen were further rankled by Horsewoman Anne's gibe after she took a fall at the European equestrian championships in Kiev: "Sorry to disappoint but I'm not badly hurt." Not even the special wedding stamp is getting its licks. Cynics note that before the princess would put her best face on it, critical retouching was required.

She came on slightly nervous, her voice tremulous. Then she crossed her trousered legs and let go with a sardonic laugh. Indomitable Katharine Hepburn, 63, was taking over the Dick Cavett show for a couple of nights. She had never been on a talk show, but Cavett had snagged her. Tossing a tidbit every so often to her young host ("I never had a man make a pass at me unless he was drunk"), Kate talked of life and death, giving her own prescription for health and energy: no smoking, drinking, or taking drugs. ("Cold sober, I find myself absolutely fascinating.") Then she sketched in a few of her fellow actors. Humphrey Bogart, she found, was "very wellborn. Frightfully good manners. He was proud of being an actor." She added, "This is not true of all actors." Particularly, it seems, of Old Flame Spencer Tracy: "I think Tracy found life extremely difficult, as most of the Irish do." A seductress for the power of positive thinking, Hepburn acknowledged: "I had every possible advantage and if my life had gone to hell I would have been a blithering idiot." Even contemplating death, she didn't falter. Delivering those Main Line vowels in a Yankee twang, Hepburn stated her credo: "I don't think you can go anywhere. Just lie in the ground. Happy. At rest. At last."

Although he spent 15 years in sanctuary at the American legation in Budapest, Josef, Cardinal Mindszenty, 81, was making his first visit to the U.S. mainland in 27 years. Dedicating a New Jersey church for a group of Hungarian Americans, the exiled Primate of Hungary, who has lived in Vienna since he left Budapest in 1971, emphasized the cultural duty of Hungarian Americans to preserve their Magyar heritage. He also commented on the plight of the Soviet Jews. Mindszenty was tortured by the Nazis after he welcomed to his monasteries in Hungary Jews fleeing before the 1944 German invasion of his homeland.

France will send a good-will ambassador to Nippon: a woman. Emerging from consultations in Paris with Japanese Premier Kakuei Tanaka, French President Georges Pompidou signaled East-West rapport with a communique. Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is to go overseas next spring for the greater glory of France. Again. In 1962 La Joconde became Culture Minister Andre Malraux's homage to Kennedy's Camelot. But are the French justified in turning a priceless painting into a political greeting card? Not only does the lady's smile seem to grow more enigmatic the farther she travels from her home in the Louvre, but her infirmities intensify. With her 500th birthday approaching, the 30 1/4 in. by 20 7/8 in. panel is very frail and brittle.

Mata Hari lives again--in the foiled mastermind of Watergate Conspirator E. Howard Hunt. On June 6, Hunt appeared before the Los Angeles grand jury investigating the break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. Officially released last week, his testimony reveals he suspected Ellsberg to be a man of "a great many sexual problems." Worse, Ellsberg "consorted with females of foreign birth and extraction, which," Hunt pronounced, "was a danger signal to anybody in the counterespionage field." Ellsberg did not deny that he was guilty of foreign intrigues but was otherwise baffled: "The few anecdotes about my sex life I told my psychiatrist quite bored him."

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